Charlotte Makes Photos

This past Sunday, instead of staying inside to do housework¹, Kathleen and I decided to take ourselves back to the Glebe so that we could attend Hallowzine at the Glebe Community Centre on Third.

As the name implies, Hallowzine is a sort of art, craft, and well, zine show where the theme is Halloween. It’s in its third year now and since it’s organized by a very small local press (also known for their dedication to trans rights, justice, and solidarity), the event was very well advertised. So after lunch, off we went, up to Elgin and Queen, where we would catch a bus this time.

The buses were quite busy that day, with people out and about, and with many users of social services in the city chatting happily in anticipation about the special Thanksgiving dinner they were going to be served at the various soup kitchens. A small group of them, noticing my camera when we boarded the bus, got excited about it and the memories it brought up for them, so I politely listened as they shared their stories.

Once we arrived at the community centre, we both knew we were in trouble, but for very different reasons.

Kathleen immediately shifted into “kid in a candy store” mode, seeing the many things she wanted to look at and purchase, so a bit like George Costanza in the Soup Nazi episode of Seinfeld, she “shifted into soup zine mode” and planned her strategy.

As for me?

Well, while the venue wasn’t exactly packed, it was still busy and filled with expectant vendors and browsers, and a million conversations. Like many people with, shall I say, ✨ a touch of the neurodiversity ✨, I have considerable difficulty with sensory processing in such places. In short, I can’t filter out any conversations (neither by prioritizing the important, nor by ignoring the unimportant), my mind straining to hear and interpret each. and. every. one. of. them. until I become overwhelmed and mentally float away.² …usually with a dumb grin on my face, pretending everything’s just peachy.

So then, mind floating, stupid grin on, I was browsing the tables until I felt a little tap on my shoulder. A very nice person recognized me and wanted to say hello. Through the brief conversation, I didn’t really manage to re-combobulate myself and was rather squirrelly and awkward through it all.

Of course, the funny thing being that when you’re floating above yourself, you’re more than self-aware from an almost third-person perspective (there’s a reason why it’s so common an image in literature) and I just ended up feeling ashamed that I couldn’t see my way clear to being comfortably myself.

Notwithstanding all of that, we did have a good time, and we made off like bandits! Kathleen with several zines and some prints, and me with a zine, crocheted pumpkin (very cute on my desk as I type this), and a nice print as well. We need to get frames!

A Twelve-Minute Walk and Twelve Photos

Most of the rest of the week was rainy, so I didn’t have the opportunity to make any new photos until Thursday, when the sun shone brightly. Tired from a busy week, but insistent that I wanted to use the opportunity to make photos, I chose numerical symmetry.

It takes twelve minutes to walk between my home and the office I work in and a roll of 120 in six-by-six has twelve frames. Since it’s a journey I make four days of seven, I knew that especially interesting photos weren’t likely, so it was more an exercise in using a camera.

…which was the main “confirmation” that I received this week: that after three rolls, the Yashica 635 seems to have healed itself after four years amidst the other shelf queens.

Upper Gallery

Lower Gallery

1. Being a long weekend (Thanksgiving), Kathleen got hers out of the way on Saturday and I decided that I would use the holiday Monday to complete mine. ↩︎
2. In a life long-past, where going out to bars and clubs was socially non-optional and beer was my “beard”, this happened much more often. I didn’t know what it meant at the time and thought I was just broken in some way or a stick-in-the-mud (just need to loosen up!), but it wouldn’t take long in the evening for me to get overwhelmed, sit back in my chair, float away with the grin and focus on the one thing I could: the drink in front of me. ↩︎